Sheet metal repair of damaged automobiles may be accomplished in a variety of ways and one manner of removing dents in metal having an inaccessible back side is to drill one or more holes in the metal and insert a tool having a right angle projection on the end so that pulling on the tool forces the metal back toward original shape. Various means are employed to apply a force to such a tool including a "come along" and a "knocker" by which repeated blows may be struck. One of the problems with this manner of removing dents is the tendency of the tool to tear the metal adjacent to the aperture or hole through which the tool is placed. Care must be taken to prevent tearing of the metal and normally the hook element must be continually repositioned. Consequently this type of dent removal is quite tedious and time consuming. Unfortunately, alternatives have been even less advantageous.
The present invention provides for splitting the force applied to a local area of metal in this general manner of dent removal and automatically aligning tool ends on the back side of the metal being operated upon.